Nose: Drinking sherry around a BBQ pit at the beach. The nose is nearly perfectly balanced between sherry and peat with lush, sherry fruit notes, dried apricost and mulling spice alternating with peat.

Palate: Ash (from the BBQ pit no doubt) followed up by light sherry notes but with a constant ashy/peaty note.

Finish: A lovely sweet and salty smoke plus dried fruit, like a trail mix with smoked almonds with dried fruit.

The nose and finish on this are superb; the palate is great but doesn't quite live up to the promise of the nose. Still, a fantastic whisky.

On the first sip or two I thought this was really good, there's massive amounts of good spice here. Cinnamon particularly, along with something more bitter-herbal and unusual. I was wondering where the smoke from the nose went, and found it quietly lurking in the background, drowned out by the spices and... something oily. A petroleum-chemical note that particularly remains in the late finish.

And it's that note that soon becomes dominating and lingering, making me not want to return to the glass for more. This is a good whisky to demonstrate why sip-tests can be so unreliable.

It's actually an interesting whisky to taste for its unusual aspects, but overall something is just wrong here.

To note, this whisky completely destroyed my palate. Nothing after tasted right. Save this for your last whisky of the night, if you must. Better yet, trade it to Sku!